


Everybody's Lonely

by catstrophysics



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: (again), (and then not loneliness), (both written and set then), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Artist Grantaire, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Inspired by Music, Kissing, Late at Night, Loneliness, M/M, Macaron the Cat, One Shot, POV Grantaire, a surprise return of Macaron the Cat!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:01:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23852746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catstrophysics/pseuds/catstrophysics
Summary: “Why’s every song about love or drinking too much?”Enjolras comes to Grantaire's apartment far too late one night. Featuring a reprisal of Macaron the kitten!
Relationships: Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 87





	Everybody's Lonely

The world cooled down as the sun set, dew condensing in hazy sheets on windows and slipping down the panes just as quickly, leaving the tear-tracks of the night in their wake. Outside on the street, lamps cast their utilitarian glow into the darkness, lighting up the fogged-over windows. A night like this could make eternity worth it, if heaven was a place on earth. 

Inside, Grantaire had allowed himself a night of his own, sinking deep into a bottle of grocery store wine and even more deeply into drawing. Hours, now, of pencil-on-paper, broken only as he leaned back against the side of the couch to pore over his memory of his subject or to take another sip of wine, letting the tender burn of the alcohol pull even more sense memories to the forefront of his mind, and he added a few strands of hair across the half-finished face on the page. 

A paw knocked at the side of his leg, tiny claws snagging in his sweatpants, and he pushed the sketchbook away to allow his kitten to clamber up his pants, stopping as she reached the top of his knee like a great explorer summiting a mountain. She let out a tiny mew as she tucked her tail in, petite brown-and-white chest puffed out with pride atop the navy blanket draped around his shoulders and over his lap. 

He scratched between her ears with a single finger. “You’ve gotten brave, Macaron, _mon petit chou_ , eh?” he said with a chuckle, and she stretched up into his touch, tail wiggling happily as he stroked her. 

As if she understood what he’d said—which he didn’t doubt; he’d seen the flashes of intelligence in her eyes before—she made her way across his lap on unsteady legs to stand on the sketchbook, one cautious paw set at the edge of the actual drawing. 

“Yeah, that’s him,” he admitted. “Beautiful, isn’t he?” 

She seemed to agree, as much as a few months old kitten could, and stepped off of the paper to set about her nightly patrol of the apartment. Chuckling at her antics, the way her stubby tail stood straight up as she inspected every corner, he resumed drawing. 

There was something about his eyes he could never get right. It was passion, he supposed, the fire of belief and conviction that didn’t translate into pencil and paper properly, but without those flames his face looked empty, half-finished. It was why Grantaire avoided drawing Enjolras as much as he could, preferring to capture the red-and-gold slash of his words across a canvas rather than the quiet, introspective set of his mouth in lifelike detail that was near impossible to render with mechanical pencil. 

The record he’d had playing on the stereo, some old rock album Bahorel had lent him, ended with a quiet clunk and then the low rumble of static as the needle lifted off of the vinyl and the apartment was enveloped again in the quiet hush of the world past midnight. When, exactly, past midnight, was unknown, but the witching hour had to be near, and the desire to sleep was but a distant thought. He was slipping back into his drawing mindset, largely blank except for an excruciatingly beautiful montage of images of Enjolras flickering through his head as he reconstructed the smattering of freckles across the man’s nose, body sinking back against the pillow behind him, when two short, sharp knocks sounded. In a flash, he sat bolt upright, and unfolded himself just as quickly to answer the door. It was likely Jehan, who tended to forget the circadian conventions of their friends when they stayed awake for too many days in a row, or Feuilly, looking for somewhere close to one of his jobs to crash for the night. Grantaire haphazardly tugged his sweatpants further up his hips as he turned the knob and pulled. 

It was not Jehan, nor was it Feuilly, nor was it any of his other friends who knocked at his door with any regularity at odd hours of the night. 

It was Enjolras, clad in a rumpled black t-shirt with a red flannel over and a pair of grey sweatpants to match Grantaire’s own. 

“Is this a bad time?” he asked, a faint edge of sheepishness in his voice and a much less faint edge of exhaustion underlying it. 

When _wasn’t_ a bad time to have Enjolras at your door, dressed in the fewest number of layers Grantaire could remember seeing him in other than the time Courfeyrac had insisted they all take a trip to the coast over the summer. It had taken weeks for Grantaire to wipe the desire to recreate the Apollo Belvedere in his image, and even then the desire never really faded. 

“Nah, come on in,” he said, and thank whatever god was listening that his voice didn’t crack, and a completely different god that his apartment was only in a mild state of disarray. He did note, absently, that it was much colder than it had been several hours ago; the apartment was ancient even by his standards, and the heating had a tendency to break as soon as it was actually needed. Grantaire had spent many a below-freezing morning on a trip to the boiler room downstairs with a wrench and the resolve to not get burned with hot steam. Again. 

He led them to the couch, stopping on the way to scoop up Macaron and tuck her against his chest where she hooked her pinprick claws into his shirt and held on. They settled at opposite ends of the cushions, Enjolras stiff and upright compared to Grantaire, who dragged the blanket up from where he’d deposited it when the knock sounded. As an afterthought, he grabbed the glass of wine from the floor and took a slow sip, studying Enjolras against the background of his apartment. “So, what brings you to this side of the tracks at this hour?” He hadn’t been entirely sure Enjolras even knew where his apartment was, if he’d bothered to remember from the last time he’d come over. 

Enjolras paused in his survey of the apartment to answer, voice smooth and melodic despite the lines of exhaustion under his eyes. “Nothing, really, just thought I’d drop by.” 

Grantaire nearly called bullshit on this; no one came to a friend’s house at—he glanced to the microwave in the kitchen, seeking out the blinking green time—2:38 in the morning for _nothing, really_ , but instead he simply nodded. 

“Music? I’ve got, um,” he mentally reviewed his music catalogue, “well, I don’t know exactly if you’d like most of it, what _do_ you like, anyways?” Classical, probably, something with a last name Grantaire knew he couldn’t pronounce. Or musicals, maybe, but all he had was Rent, and that awful Andrew Lloyd Webber sequel to Phantom of the Opera that had given him a weird feeling in the pit of his stomach halfway through when he’d listened with his sister, and she’d demanded he take it out of her house. 

“Anything.” Not a helpful answer, but Grantaire accepted it and flipped the record on the player over to the beginning and set the needle down. 

The silence wove back between them in tendrils, broken only by the guitar riff coming from the tinny speakers and the minute vibrations of Macaron purring against Grantaire’s chest. Ordinarily, he loved this sort of silence, calm and empty save for the quiet hum of the world turning through the universe, but with Enjolras here, opposite him on the couch and just out of reach, it was suffocating. He wanted to draw, just to keep his mind away from whirling speculation on why he had actually come, but retrieving the sketchbook meant a nonzero chance of the man seeing the drawing open, so he just sat, rubbing the kitten’s soft fur and staring at the window behind Enjolras. It was hard not to notice how the fog-diffused streetlight filtered through his blond curls. Grantaire tried, and failed, and focused so intently on trying that at first he didn’t notice Enjolras staring at him. 

When he did, though, he first noticed the tears welling up in his eyes, and for a moment he figured this whole night had been a dream. Enjolras didn’t cry, didn’t have an emotion in his statuesque body other than those ranging from moderate annoyance to righteous, all-consuming fury. 

Naturally, he pinched the inside of his elbow, and winced when it hurt. Not a dream, after all. 

Enjolras caught him looking, then, and the tears began to slide down his cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Grantaire, really, I just didn’t know where to go, and I was out walking—” Grantaire wondered briefly how he’d gotten to this apartment building despite living several neighborhoods over, “—and I wanted to come see you, and I just…” he faded out, wiping aggressively at his face. 

He was beautiful, even crying, and Grantaire slid closer across the couch, reaching out to drape the blanket over both their shoulders. “What’s wrong, Apollo?” 

The nickname brought a tiny, shy grin to his face, before it was swallowed back up in his despair. “Everything, I think, it’s all just so _hopeless_ , and I don’t know what to do anymore.” He paused, and Grantaire almost spoke, poised to dismiss his worries, when: “I’m just so lonely, now, and you were nearby, and I wanted to see you.” 

_Oh._

“Everybody’s lonely, Enj, it’s the human condition,” he said, “is this about anything specific, or just life?”

Enjolras sniffled, and Grantaire handed him the box of tissues off the coffee table without a thought. 

“Why’s every song about love or drinking too much?” he asked, and Grantaire had an answer, poised on the tip of his tongue, but he figured the man probably wasn’t in the right mindset to hear it, if he was asking rhetorical philosophical questions. He regarded the window again, watching a droplet run down the pane and gather other, smaller drops as it fell. 

He leaned closed, bumping his shoulder against Enjolras’s hunched form, and slipped an arm around his back under the blanket. His muscles tensed, before relaxing into Grantaire’s touch. The night held its breath between them, Enjolras’s quiet sniffles as the tears dripping from his eyes slowed. Macaron began a determined march across the couch from where Grantaire had deposited her to Enjolras’s lap, glaring indignantly at the tissue box before settling in against his hip, curling into a tight ball in his warmth. 

“Good kitten,” Enjolras said softly, and Grantaire tried and failed to bite back a laugh. His eyes turned soft as they flickered over to land on him, a shade of blue that belonged in a museum, covered in delicately-crafted oil paint clouds or in broad strokes in the dress of the Virgin Mary. 

He was staring, he knew, could feel it in the back of his mind, the tingling feeling that came with trying to commit an image to memory, but Enjolras stared right back. The song that had been playing ended, and another came on. A love song Grantaire vaguely recognized from its time on the radio, and a tiny spark lit back into Enjolras’s eyes. 

“See, this is exactly what I’m talking about, another love song—”

“Enjolras,” Grantaire cut in, “have you ever been in love?” 

He froze, and Grantaire felt him draw in a sharp breath beside him. “Why?” 

The words to answer eluded him, trickling away as he dug through his thoughts. “Because… because it feels _important_ when you are, I guess, to capture every single moment of it and you feel so lost and confused if you don’t, like, it almost gets more lonely if you don’t let it out somewhere, I think, which is why I draw, mostly. Love. I think.” He frowned; putting the word ‘love’ to his drawing of Enjolras, even assigning it to the painting that lay half-finished in the corner, shades of red and gold and the loose suggestion of a banner flying free, felt significant, somehow. 

Enjolras let out a breath, slow and contemplative. The sound was louder than it should have been in the night. “Then yeah, I think I have,” he said. 

Something fragile in Grantaire’s chest splintered. “What were they like?” he asked, lamely. “Did you two ever, y’know, date? Or anything?” The questions were individual thorns in his heart, and he could feel them pricking holes in his resolve as he asked them, but a casual conversation with Enjolras—especially for the two of them—was so rare, he wanted to stretch it out as long as he could. 

“They’re great,” he began, a flame flickering to light behind his eyes, “an artist, and sarcastic as hell, and they’ve got this lovely, curly dark hair, you can always tell when they walk into a room because it just feels _brighter_ , you know?” Grantaire nodded. The guy sounded amazing, for sure. “And he’s a really great debater, but you’d never know, because his major isn’t all that debate-centric, but God, get him going, and…” he trailed off, smiling fondly. 

“He sounds great, for sure,” Grantaire said. “You should, I dunno, see if he feels the same? Or just kiss him, I dunno, sounds like the type of guy that’d probably go for it.” The visual of Enjolras kissing some dark-haired man, pressing him up against a wall and smiling against his lips, threading his fingers through his hair, twisted a tight knot in his stomach. Another artist, replicating him huddled under a blanket on a different couch, but with Enjolras’s hair messy from his hands and mouth slightly swollen from his lips. 

His thoughts had taken over for the moment, drowning out the room around him and the music in the background, the self-flagellation of imagining Enjolras with some nameless, faceless man absorbing him. 

Enjolras’s hand on his wrist brought him back to the present, warm and cautious as it slid up his arm. “You think so?” he asked, seeking permission with searching blue eyes. 

“I know so,” Grantaire said, and the world clicked into place around them as Enjolras placed his hand against his cheek and pulled him in gently. 

Grantaire had kissed beautiful people before, crowded them up against doors and walls and hell, even headboards, and every time it was electrifying, the crackle of emotion and heat between possessive, demanding lips. 

That wasn’t this, wasn’t even close. 

This was the slow, gentle press of starlight on his mouth and the warm buzz of wine in his veins, his skin searing where Enjolras’s fingers touched, tracing lines up his forearms and tilting his head back as he deepened the kiss. A quiet _thud_ gave away Macaron, jumping down to avoid the fuss of whatever her dad was doing to their visitor. 

Grantaire brought his other arm up, lacing his fingers into Enjolras’s loose hair, pulling him closer with his hand under the blanket around his back, and distantly, he noted the music again. Still a love song. 

They drew back slowly, taking long, languorous moments to breathe each other in. Grantaire pressed a few lingering kisses to the corner of Enjolras’s mouth, to the side of his face, to the tip of his nose. Enjolras giggled, and the sound tolled a bell in Grantaire’s heart and he pulled him in again to press one last, persistent kiss to his lips. 

“So I take it I was the guy,” he said lowly, and Enjolras broke into hysterical laughter, shaking mightily beside him.

“Yes, you’re the guy, Grantaire,” he said. “You’ve always been the guy, I think. As long as I can remember, at least.” 

He searched Enjolras’s face. “How long can you remember?” 

Enjolras leaned back into the couch, threading his fingers into Grantaire’s unoccupied hand and pulling him closer. “Do you remember the night that Courfeyrac got arrested for the first time? And we were all so nervous we climbed up on the roof of that building, and sat there keeping watch until he was released in the morning?”

How could Grantaire forget? Éponine had started a game of Truth or Dare or Shot, and secrets amongst their friends had been laid bare in the light of the half-moon hanging low in the sky. 

Bossuet had asked him who he liked, he remembered, like they were teenagers whispering at a sleepover, and for a moment the circle had fallen silent and he’d considered telling the truth, admitting it was Enjolras, but instead he’d held out his hand for the bottle and taken a long swig before daring Musichetta to do a handstand while they were up that high. (She did.) 

“I remember,” he answered, wary. 

“Do you remember at the park, earlier that day?” 

The actual protest, unsurprisingly, had faded from his memory, blending into the montage of speeches of Enjolras’s that occupied his thoughts half the day. He shook his head. 

Enjolras’s eyes crinkled in memory, and once again Grantaire was struck by the fine sculpting of his features, thrown into sharp relief in the half-light. “Some guy had come up to me, looked like he was going to start trouble, and you just stepped in and insulted him, a real dressing-down, and he walked away without a word. It was…” 

“Idiotic?” Grantaire offered. 

“Alluring,” Enjolras said. “So yeah, since then.” 

Grantaire did some quick counting in his head, double-checking to be sure he’d gotten the years right. “That’s… eight years.” 

“Eight years, yeah. Sounds about right.” 

Grantaire hummed softly. “We’ve got a lot to make up for, then,” he said. 

“That we do.” 

Later, as the sun was beginning to rise through the tiny window in Grantaire’s bedroom, casting its golden light across Enjolras’s bare skin, illuminating his figure as though it were alight from the inside and Grantaire was about ready to collapse from exhaustion and ecstasy, Enjolras pressed a sleepy kiss to his palm before tugging his arm around his shoulders and wriggling under the covers. 

“Not lonely anymore,” he murmured, words barely audible. Then he drifted swiftly off to sleep, his breathing evening out in Grantaire’s arms.

**Author's Note:**

>  _mon petit chou_ : a term of endearment, lit. "my little cabbage." It sparked joy the first time I read it and I've been waiting to use it for so long now. 
> 
> This fic was based off of [Everybody's Lonely](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pqh4v5s5A4k) by Jukebox the Ghost.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed! If you did, please drop some kudos/leave a comment. While we're here, I'm going to plug my exR high school AU [Caught in the Crossfire](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23292466), because this is my end notes section and no one can tell me what to do. 
> 
> Wrote this at, like, 3am today, because my brain wouldn't let me sleep otherwise. I’m [here](https://catstrophysics.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr, feel free to pop over and come talk to me about Les Mis or cats (or anything else, really)!


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